OF SOCIETY. 



543 



the literary movement of which Carlyle was the great 

 representative. But it was there denounced more in 

 the interests of the old-fashioned ideals, of the eternal 

 verities and the higher culture, than from the point 

 of view of the suffering and labouring classes. 1 A 

 much more formidable protest " against such a picture 

 of industrial life as a mere sordid struggle of con- 

 flicting interests " arose in tne ranks of modern social- 

 ism of which Karl Marx was the centre, and it is 

 accordingly quite natural that he should have fast- 

 ened upon the Kicardian theories as the basis of his 

 industrial philosophy. Admitting that these iron laws 

 and this inexorable fate represent correctly the tyranny 

 of modern society, notably in its most advanced in- 



77. 

 The Ricar- 



p 



1 The merit of having from a 

 philanthropic and humanitarian 

 point of view opposed the orthodox 

 political economy of Adam Smith's 

 followers notably of Ricardo 

 (1772-1823) in this country and 

 of "Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) 

 in France belongs to the historian 

 Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842). 

 He asked the question which he 

 put in conversation with Ricardo : 

 " What ! is wealth then every- 

 thing ? are men absolutely noth- 

 ing ? " He occupies an intermediate 

 position between the laissez faire 

 school which believed in an over- 

 ruling natural or Divine justice 

 and the modern ' school of self-help ' 

 of which the Socialists are the 

 extreme exponents, and he also 

 forms the transition from the 

 philosophical or mathematical treat- 

 ment of economic problems (Ric- 

 ardo) to the historical treatment 

 which is the characteristic feature 

 of scientific economics in Germany 

 with Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894) 

 as the leader. Here it is in- 



teresting to remark that, though 

 an historian himself, Sismondi did 

 not adopt the historical method in 

 his economic treatises. Historians 

 of political economy, such as 

 Ingram, and of sociology, such as 

 Dr Ludwig Stein, both trace the 

 change of aspect which begins with 

 Sismondi's writings in France and 

 those of List in Germany to an 

 actually much deeper-going change 

 of thought namely, from the 

 implied theological presuppositions 

 of Adam Smith to the purely 

 anthropological of the modern age. 

 In Germany this change is strikingly 

 brought out in Feuerbach's philo- 

 sophy. Dr Stein, in an impressive 

 passage ('Die Soziale Frage,' p. 

 320), describes as the characteristic 

 of the present age the Soziale Welt- 

 schmerz, the intense sorrow over the 

 misery of the masses, and he 

 maintains that this has become 

 intensified since the customary 

 belief in an overruling Divine 

 Providence has more or less dis- 

 appeared. 



